1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital logic gates, and more particularly, to improved AND and OR gates having a plurality of inputs, which may be used in a variety of circuit applications.
2. Art Background
In many computer systems, it is necessary to utilize AND or OR gates as part of a digital circuit. Typically, the use of an AND or OR gate within a circuit does not adversely impact the speed of the circuit, since the number of inputs into the particular logic gate is small. However, in the case where a logic gate must detect whether one of tens or hundreds of inputs are either high or low, the digital logic comprising the gate may take hundreds of nanoseconds to make the determination. The use of an AND or OR gate having tens or hundreds of inputs may significantly impact the speed of the digital circuit, and create a bottleneck to efficient circuit operation due to the length of time which the gate takes to generate an output.
As will be described, the present invention provides improved AND and OR gates which may be used in a variety of circuits requiring large numbers of inputs into the logic gate. The present invention's triple rail structure permits the logical AND or OR functions to be completed very quickly using a single logic gate, and significantly improves system performance time.